Cattle cull

[RadioGAAGAA]

And 1 broke out because the facilities were poor.Can you accept at least that vets are best suited to make these calls?

One broke out because the door worked loose.


Easy (temporary) fix - tie it as well as bolt it.

[marty34]

The farming community has been gunning for Muir for a long time given his desire to give DAERA's environmental responsibilities a higher priority.

It's really 2 departments merged....and they are the complete opposite of each other.

[RadioGAAGAA]

Armagh18 the vets in the video and they quote expert studies that this was the most humane way to carry this out. If you get a chance take a look at the video.

You didn't answer before, so I'll ask again.

Are you in any way involved with cattle at all?

No does that mean I'm not allowed an opinion? Are you a vet at all?

It does mean your opinion is rather baseless.

You've no idea of the difference good handling systems make, or what even is possible by clamping up a few gates.


I'm not a vet, but involved with farming. Some of it on pretty shit ground so the circumstances here aren't unknown to me for rounding up cattle or sheep.


I do know this - if you gave me access to all the equipment and manpower DAERA has - I'd easily have organised the rounding up of these animals and removal from the 3 sites.

Its Fivemiletown. Its not f**king Tibet or the Amazon.

And in your experience if there is bad terrain is it possible that these cattle could get seriously injured in an attempt to round them up?

If you are stupid and rush them, yes - I'll not pretend its not possible.

But if you take your time and give them breathing space, with the manpower that could have been made available, they no doubt could have been shepherded to better ground and penned without incident.

Again - DAERA is probably the biggest landowner in the north. They have hundreds of students at greenmount alone. They are undoubtedly the best equipped agricultural group in the north. They have everything they needed to get this done except someone with the gumption to shake a few trees.

[Armagh18]

Armagh18 the vets in the video and they quote expert studies that this was the most humane way to carry this out. If you get a chance take a look at the video.

You didn't answer before, so I'll ask again.

Are you in any way involved with cattle at all?

No does that mean I'm not allowed an opinion? Are you a vet at all?

It does mean your opinion is rather baseless.

You've no idea of the difference good handling systems make, or what even is possible by clamping up a few gates.


I'm not a vet, but involved with farming. Some of it on pretty shit ground so the circumstances here aren't unknown to me for rounding up cattle or sheep.


I do know this - if you gave me access to all the equipment and manpower DAERA has - I'd easily have organised the rounding up of these animals and removal from the 3 sites.

Its Fivemiletown. Its not f**king Tibet or the Amazon.

And in your experience if there is bad terrain is it possible that these cattle could get seriously injured in an attempt to round them up?

Of course it's possible. But lets not pretend cattle aren't regularly gathered up on bad ground throughout the country and worldwide with little enough fuss.

[reddgnhand]

But we both don't know the caliber of these vets. Tell me watching the 2 vets questioned by the committee do you think they are sadistic in anyway? These people have been threatened for carrying out their job and have been shown absolutely no respect.

What 2 vets?

This hearing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs4t--M6EXQ&list=PL5lnNfzfEzh5UeUGNYOuL26w6Zmt7dSiz&index=2

Yes.

Its nothing to do with sadistic.

To be honest, its far more masochistic to have to try to round up the stock!

Do you think either of them look like they'd fancy trekking around for half a day?



To be clear - they, or no one else, should be threatened. The one who should be threatened is the farmer who ignored repeated warnings over many years of maltreatment of animals.


Those two just shouldn't be making decisions of this magnitude any longer. I've very little respect for their decision making abilities given what appears to have happened.

Why not it's their job? We both don't have all the facts so they should not be judged. They are the ones with the experience of dealing with these cases. As they have stated in the video these actions have been carried out in the past.

[reddgnhand]

Armagh18 the vets in the video and they quote expert studies that this was the most humane way to carry this out. If you get a chance take a look at the video.

You didn't answer before, so I'll ask again.

Are you in any way involved with cattle at all?

No does that mean I'm not allowed an opinion? Are you a vet at all?

It does mean your opinion is rather baseless.

You've no idea of the difference good handling systems make, or what even is possible by clamping up a few gates.


I'm not a vet, but involved with farming. Some of it on pretty shit ground so the circumstances here aren't unknown to me for rounding up cattle or sheep.


I do know this - if you gave me access to all the equipment and manpower DAERA has - I'd easily have organised the rounding up of these animals and removal from the 3 sites.

Its Fivemiletown. Its not f**king Tibet or the Amazon.

And in your experience if there is bad terrain is it possible that these cattle could get seriously injured in an attempt to round them up?

Of course it's possible. But lets not pretend cattle aren't regularly gathered up on bad ground throughout the country and worldwide with little enough fuss.

If you believe it's possible could the vets also have believed it's possible as part of their risk assessment. They also have to consider the safety of Daera staff in all of this. Is that not what a risk assessment is all about?

[RadioGAAGAA]

Why not it's their job? We both don't have all the facts so they should not be judged. They are the ones with the experience of dealing with these cases. As they have stated in the video these actions have been carried out in the past.

How many open field culls have either of those two directed?


A load of things don't stack up.


"The farmer wouldn't get rid of any animals so we had to act immediately."
- He was in the vet office in the process of transferring animals off the herd book.... and had already sold a small number a week or two beforehand.

"All about animal welfare"
- So the herd is shot in sight of each other?

"Performed by highly trained personnel"
- Do DAERA have a division of snipers hiding somewhere? They could put their hands on people who could cleanly pick off running cattle from 50 yards away with shots that killed them instantly and without distress but couldn't find anyone* trained in the rather less exacting ability of capping cows to round them up? *despite greenmount, ran by DAERA, having approx 1900 students working in agriculture in it.

[trileacman]

DAERA did f**k up though. Given all the lay staff they have it really shouldn't have been an issue to round up the livestock and slaughter them out of sight of the public. Getting a marksman to pick them off in a field was the lazy solution and they are paying the price for it now.

That is the only big mistake made here really...

and whoever did signed off on it probably does need to be shown the door - or demoted out of decision making as they've proven themselves too stupid to be in charge of anything more than running a tap.


If they have no appreciation of what the optics of shooting 50 cattle in open public would look like, they really aren't competent enough for their responsibilities.

There was a risk assessment made and it was decided it wasn't safe to round up these cattle and that the most humane way to cull the cattle was in their own environment. The vets followed expert advice. Watch the video on YouTube of the agriculture Committee questioning the vets involved and this is all explained.

Risk assessment my hole? All 51 cattle were too wild to handle or gather up? A bullshit excuse for the easy option of shooting them in the field. As I said it was harder to make an attempt to gather up the cattle than the easy option of shooting them and gathering them with a telehandler the following day. Even the arrangement of killing all 51 and then lifting them lying in the open for a day speaks to their general incompetence.

Portable animal handling facilities do exist and are readily available for purchase. Any moron with 15 - 20 galvanised field gates and 40 foot of rope could rig up an area to hold and load livestock.

[reddgnhand]

Armagh18 the vets in the video and they quote expert studies that this was the most humane way to carry this out. If you get a chance take a look at the video.

You didn't answer before, so I'll ask again.

Are you in any way involved with cattle at all?

No does that mean I'm not allowed an opinion? Are you a vet at all?

It does mean your opinion is rather baseless.

You've no idea of the difference good handling systems make, or what even is possible by clamping up a few gates.


I'm not a vet, but involved with farming. Some of it on pretty shit ground so the circumstances here aren't unknown to me for rounding up cattle or sheep.


I do know this - if you gave me access to all the equipment and manpower DAERA has - I'd easily have organised the rounding up of these animals and removal from the 3 sites.

Its Fivemiletown. Its not f**king Tibet or the Amazon.

And in your experience if there is bad terrain is it possible that these cattle could get seriously injured in an attempt to round them up?

If you are stupid and rush them, yes - I'll not pretend its not possible.

But if you take your time and give them breathing space, with the manpower that could have been made available, they no doubt could have been shepherded to better ground and penned without incident.

Again - DAERA is probably the biggest landowner in the north. They have hundreds of students at greenmount alone. They are undoubtedly the best equipped agricultural group in the north. They have everything they needed to get this done except someone with the gumption to shake a few trees.

Again sorry to go back to the video. The vets stated that these actions are carried out by a highly trained team. I'm not aware of the numbers in this team but I would seriously doubt that Daera would take untrained staff along to these operations.Do you accept that the vets in question made available reports compiled by experts that this was the was the most humane way to carry out this action.

[RadioGAAGAA]

If you believe it's possible could the vets also have believed it's possible as part of their risk assessment. They also have to consider the safety of Daera staff in all of this. Is that not what a risk assessment is all about?

If you know how a risk assessment works, then severity and probability should both have scored low for it.

IMO the overriding concern here was "could we really be fucked going out and rounding this lot up?"

[RadioGAAGAA]

Again sorry to go back to the video. The vets stated that these actions are carried out by a highly trained team. I'm not aware of the numbers in this team but I would seriously doubt that Daera would take untrained staff along to these operations.

Yes - as said in previous post - amazing that DAERA can find a rake of highly trained snipers to pick off running cattle.

But they cannot find anyone to cap some cows.

Dunno what the 1900 people in Greenmount are getting taught these days!

Do you accept that the vets in question made available reports compiled by experts that this was the was the most humane way to carry out this action.

Absolutely not.

They completely fucked up the risk assessment - or plainly could not be arsed going through the hassle of rounding up the livestock. Take your pick.

[reddgnhand]

DAERA did f**k up though. Given all the lay staff they have it really shouldn't have been an issue to round up the livestock and slaughter them out of sight of the public. Getting a marksman to pick them off in a field was the lazy solution and they are paying the price for it now.

That is the only big mistake made here really...

and whoever did signed off on it probably does need to be shown the door - or demoted out of decision making as they've proven themselves too stupid to be in charge of anything more than running a tap.


If they have no appreciation of what the optics of shooting 50 cattle in open public would look like, they really aren't competent enough for their responsibilities.

There was a risk assessment made and it was decided it wasn't safe to round up these cattle and that the most humane way to cull the cattle was in their own environment. The vets followed expert advice. Watch the video on YouTube of the agriculture Committee questioning the vets involved and this is all explained.

Risk assessment my hole? All 51 cattle were too wild to handle or gather up? A bullshit excuse for the easy option of shooting them in the field. As I said it was harder to make an attempt to gather up the cattle than the easy option of shooting them and gathering them with a telehandler the following day. Even the arrangement of killing all 51 and then lifting them lying in the open for a day speaks to their general incompetence.

Portable animal handling facilities do exist and are readily available for purchase. Any moron with 15 - 20 galvanised field gates and 40 foot of rope could rig up an area to hold and load livestock.

Risk assessment are in place to protect all. The decision was made not to round up the cattle. A decision made by those that have the experience in making such decisions.

[reddgnhand]

Again sorry to go back to the video. The vets stated that these actions are carried out by a highly trained team. I'm not aware of the numbers in this team but I would seriously doubt that Daera would take untrained staff along to these operations.

Yes - as said in previous post - amazing that DAERA can find a rake of highly trained snipers to pick off running cattle.

But they cannot find anyone to cap some cows.

Dunno what the 1900 people in Greenmount are getting taught these days!

Do you accept that the vets in question made available reports compiled by experts that this was the was the most humane way to carry out this action.

Absolutely not.

They completely fucked up the risk assessment - or plainly could not be arsed going through the hassle of rounding up the livestock. Take your pick.

Again without all the facts how can you be certain that they fucked up the risk assessment?

[Stall the Bailer]

Reddgnhand are you of the opinion that civil servants in Derea can't make mistakes and should just believed in what they say?

[trileacman]

Do the authorities have holding facilities for animals in an event like this? What could the authorities actually have done operationally. Not just conceptually. How does that look? Where do they take them?

A mart?

Surely there were better options.

This is kind of my point. That sounds grand and rational and all that and sounds like a better option

A reality is we have created, and live in, a world full of bullshit, red tape, beauacracy etc. That have taken us to a place where common sense solutions are often not available in the reality of all the above nonsense.

I think it's also a bit naive of us to think that it was done on a whim and they didn't exhaust scenarios for the situation.

They'd loads of options. DAERA currently slaughter 1000's of cattle at a meat factory on the North Coast (as far as I know they still have the contract) where they are killed and the carcasses sent for destruction. Happens every week. There is no way that DAERA exhausted all the options. Some idiot just chose the easiest option for them and invented the "risk assessment" excuse to suit.

Just because they are vets doesn't mean they are immune to mistakes or malpractice. A qualified doctor can make a horlocks of a decision as I'm sure we are all aware. Shooting 4 or 5 animals too crazy to round up was explainable. Shooting 51 and leaving them scattered across hills like they were on a buffalo hunt is not defendable.